1. Technical Field
The present invention related to a medical inspection device, and more particularly, to an improved medical inspection device including a hand-held portion, a display portion, and an inspection module.
2. Description of Related Art
It is common that doctors use conventional hand-held examining devices for otologic, peroral or nasal endoscopy to facilitate diagnosing their patients. Such a conventional hand-held examining device is configured like a magnifying glass, having a grip shank and an observing part. The observing part has its front end formed in a taper for easily entering an organ to be examined. At the distal portion of the tapered part, there is a lens for magnifying an image inside the interior of the organ to be examined so as to facilitate a doctor's diagnosis.
However, in use of the conventional hand-held examining device, to observe the magnified image, the user (i.e. the doctor) has to approach his/her eye to the observing part to look steadily at the lens. This can probably bring eyestrain to the user, and thus is not an ideal way to make observation. Besides, in use of the conventional hand-held examining device, additional light sources are usually required to illuminate the dark interior of organs for clear observation, thus forming another inconvenience. Moreover, after observation is made by using such a hand-held examining device, the only way to record the observed images is the doctor's sketches on paper. Consequently, the correctness of anamneses can be deteriorated if there is any inaccuracy existing in such sketches.
In view of this, there has been proposed a medical inspection device for remedying the shortcomings of the traditional hand-held examining devices. FIG. 1 is a sectional view of a conventional medical inspection device. The medical inspection device A10 includes a body A12 for a user to grip, a display portion A17 that has a screen A21, a speculum portion A14 that has a lens A30 at a front end thereof for entering an organ to be examined and capturing images, a sensor A34 converting the images into video signals; a focus control switch A24 for adjusting a focal length of the lens A30 through a cable A50, and a plurality of light generators A40, which are LEDs for emitting light beams that are then projected to an external target object through a light pipe A46 for illuminating the field of view. Therein, the body A12, the display portion A17, and the speculum portion A14 are enclosed by an integratedly formed housing and made not detachable.
After every single time of use, the speculum portion A14 directly contacting a patient's organ needs to be disinfected. However, since the medical inspection device A10 is integratedly formed, it is impossible to detach the speculum portion A14 for separate disinfection, thus being very inconvenient. In another case where any of the components inside the speculum portion A14 fails, replacement or repair of the problem component can never be accomplished unless the entire medical inspection device A10 is disassembled.
On the other hand, along the route defined by the light pipe A46 where the light emitted by the light generator A40 proceeds to the target object, the optical energy is more or less lost during the transmission along the light pipe A46. Besides, the light pipe A46 itself increases the overall manufacturing cost.
In view of this, it is necessary to provide an improved medical inspection device that addresses all the shortcomings of the prior art devices.